GaragePowered

Why GaragePowered?

GaragePowered sounds like a bad idea.  You work a full job during the day, then you come home and work another job!  Should you do things GaragePowered, or use the traditional Venture Capital approach?

The truth is unless you’re funding your business from a personal bank roll or are extremely well connected, you’re always going start off GaragePowered.

Maybe you’re writing the business plan for your news business in the evenings or weekends, or perhaps you’re taking a “personal” day from work to go pitching the new business idea to the VC’s.

Work load levels aside, there are plenty of benefits to going GaragePowered, the primary one being control. Besides signing over a large percentage of your company to VCs, you’ll be giving up a large amount of control when you taken on VC’s as investors. VC’s will usually require seats on the board of investors and involvement in all major decisions.

It’s not all bad though, for their investment VC’s can provide some valuable help. They work with a many startups so can provide you with lots of advice on how to structure and run your business. VC’s are also well connected in the industry and can open doors that would normally be shut to you. Other investors, potential clients, or good employee’s could come easier with a referral from a VC.

If you go the GaragePowered route you remain the one in charge of your business, you live and die by your decisions. You are taking all the risks, and get all the rewards from those risks. GaragePowered is a good option for the controls freaks out there, with limited funds and a small team, the GaragePowered entrepreneur will need to be involved in all aspects of the business.

The lack of capital for the GaragePowered is not always a bad thing. Well funded startups often lose their focus, and companies flush with investment dollars worry more about launch parties, and big new offices than their business. Being forced to keep a close eye on every penny spent helps your you hone in on what is really important to the success of your business.

Ultimately not all business can be GaragePowered, the dollars required to start some businesses will put them out of the reach of most Garage Entrepreneurs, but for those that can its makes for a very viable way to start your business.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 12:58 am and is filed under Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.